I've Been Getting Used to Liars
by serenelystrange
Summary: The landline is ringing, which never means anything good. Or, the one where Hardison just wants to get some sleep, but someone decides to get kidnapped instead! This is the first Leverage thing I've written in over a year, please be kind!


It's been three years since Nate and Sophie left them the business and ran off to get married and retire in wedded bliss.

It's been two years since Eliot finally stopped arguing that they shouldn't stay in Portland, or any one place, now that Nate's vendetta was put to rest.

It's been just under a year since Parker showed up at Hardison's front door, a large suitcase casually leaning against her hip, telling him that she didn't need her safehouses anymore, and that she hated the mornings when they didn't wake up together.

It's been three months since Eliot moved in next door, grumbling about having to try to rush through traffic every time the other two got into trouble to save their asses.

It's been over ten years since Hardison was a gawky teenage genius hacking into banks to pay for Nana's medical bills, and he goes between not believing it's been so long, and it feeling like several lifetimes ago.

It's only been about ten minutes since he shut his eyes, Parker sprawled out next to him, already dead asleep, when the landline rings.

.

"Who's dead?"

Parker shoots up from her sprawl, the question coming out sharper than it has any right to considering she was sleeping only moments before.

The landline just continues ringing on the cherry-wood desk across the room, mocking them with its cheerful old-timey shrill. Hardison had found it in a thrift store a while back and grabbed it immediately, charmed by its honest-to-God turn dial.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Hardison placates her, throwing back the covers so he can get to phone.

Only a few people even know the number, and even fewer would be calling it in the middle of the night.

"Hello?" he says, holding the heavy brass to his ear, his other arm clutched across his chest anxiously.

"They've taken Sophie," the voice says, blunt.

"Nate?" Hardison asks before he can help it. Who else would it be?

"What's going on?" Parker asks, already getting up and pulling on clothes.

"Who did? Where are you?" Hardison asks, holding up a hand to Parker to wait a minute, wishing that the old phone had a speaker.

"Florida," Nate says, "outside of Orlando."

"Who?" Hardison asks again, trying not to panic at the dead calm of Nate's voice.

"The mark," Nate replies. "Can you be here tomorrow?"

"Obviously," Hardison says, "text me the address. We'll go get Eliot."

"Good," Nate says, still too calm.

"Nate?" Hardison says, a warning.

"Hardison," Nate throws back, a rebellion.

"Don't do anything stupid until we get there."

Hardison hangs up before Nate can deny it, and watches his phone light up with what is sure to be Nate's text.

He looks at Parker, who is standing at the closet, pulling out a duffel bag and pondering the clothes hanging there, waiting to hear what they'll need.

"Looks like we're going to Florida," Hardison says, rubbing the sleepiness from his eyes.

"Ugh," Parker sighs, "mosquitos."

Hardison can only nod in agreement.

.

Eliot takes the news of Sophie being kidnapped about as well as they expected. Namely, it's a good thing Hardison owns the building, because there's no way in hell Eliot would get a security deposit back after all the holes he's put into the walls.

They get on the first non-stop flight they can book, taking off just past 5AM, knowing they're in for six long hours of worrying.

They land in Orlando mid-afternoon, the harsh sunshine and stifling heat of summer welcoming them with sticky arms.

Eliot rents an SUV with one of his alias' excellent credit history and platinum Amex card. By the time they arrive at Nate's rental house, they're starving and near dead on their feet, but determined.

Nate takes one look at them as he opens the door and sighs.

"Ok, everyone gets an hour to power nap. We can't help Sophie if you're all zombies."

Eliot just grunts and moves to the couch, collapsing onto it without another thought.

"He's gone soft," Nate muses dryly, "he used to go days without sleep without so much as a yawn."

"Fuck off," Eliot grumbles, but it's less than threatening when it's smushed into a decorative pillow.

"Guest rooms are down the hall," Nate points, "I'll wake you in an hour."

Hardison nods, clasping Nate's shoulder quickly in reassurance, before letting Parker pull him along to the promise of sleep.

.

Two hours later, woken, fed and caffeinated, Nate's driving the SUV, leading them towards a shady warehouse district outside of the city.

"Why is it always a warehouse?" Parker says, wrinkling her nose. "Tacky."

"This was an easy job," Nate says, ignoring the question in favor of filling them in. "Guy's name is Jack Russel…"

"Like the dog?" Hardison can't help but ask.

"Coincidence," Nate says, "but yes."

"Anyway," he continues, "we got a visit a few weeks ago from one of this guy's ex-girlfriends, Loretta. Long story short, he's gotten deep into the world of drugs and underage prostitution, and his newest acquisition was Loretta's little sister."

"So she wanted to get her sister out and ended up running for her life?" Eliot asks from the passenger seat, staring at the grim look on Nate's face.

"No," Nate says, shaking his head slightly, "her sister was dumped on her front porch after overdosing at one of Russel's "parties," and she barely survived. Loretta wants to destroy everything Russel has built, and in her own words, 'shoot him in the motherfucking face.'"

"Good," Parker says, "we can help with that."

"Sophie was posing as rival drug dealer, pretending to infringe on his customers to get information. We were going to let the police do most of the work. We just needed to catch him in the act. Drugs or prostitution, didn't matter, just something to get him put away."

Nate pauses, taking a deep breath before continuing.

"But Sophie… you know how she gets. Once she saw some of the girls he kept, how strung out they were, she changed the plan without consulting me. Walked right into his operation and demanded to be sold the girls, said she could turn a much higher profit once she'd 'trained them some.'"

"Dammit, Sophie," Eliot mutters, "I can't imagine they took too kindly to that."

"No," Nate agrees. "Thankfully I heard all this over the earpiece before they found it and destroyed it, but it's been almost a full day now, and I haven't been able to get any visual or audio on her since. They don't know my face yet, but I'm outnumbered. I don't even know if she's… if they…"

"She's alive," Hardison says with conviction, "Sophie is smart. Even if she can't get out on her own, she'll be able to stall them long enough."

"I know," Nate says, staring straight ahead as the sun sets around them. "But if she's not," he breaks off, not willing to finish the sentence.

"You were supposed to be retired," Eliot says a few minutes of tense silence later.

To his surprise, Nate laughs, some of the tension around them dissipating.

"We are," he says, shrugging minutely, "mostly."

Eliot just snorts and shakes his head, going back to staring out the window.

.

.

When they get to the warehouse, Eliot barely has time to punch out once security guard before Jack Russel himself is pointing a gun at them, a knife poised to Sophie's throat.

To her credit, she looks merely inconvenienced, tied to a chair and only slightly rumpled.

The other three henchmen spread throughout the room across from them, also pointing guns.

"Another step and I'll slice her throat," Russel warns, pressing the blade against Sophie's skin.

She rolls her eyes at his dramatics, sharing an exasperated look with Hardison.

"I don't know," Nate says, smiling in that way of his that is barely less than a snarl. "It seems awfully bright in here to be making threats."

"What?" Russel says, thrown off guard, and widening his eyes to look around at the dimly lit warehouse, just as Sophie closes her eyes as tight as she can.

The room explodes in a bright white lights, the flash bombs Hardison had snuck in undetected going off all at once as he clicks the button against his wrist.

Behind dark sunglasses like the ones he wears, Nate and Parker smile wide as they rush towards Sophie. Eliot, in his own glasses, takes care of the remaining thugs before they even know what's happening, leaving them unconscious on the dirty floor.

Parker works on untying Sophie's ropes as Nate grabs Russel by the throat with one hand, knocking the weapons from his hands with the others.

"You think that you can just steal my wife and expect to get away with it? You think I wouldn't come after you? Did you expect to get out of this alive?"

"Don't be so dramatic, darling," Sophie says, stretching out her achy muscles.

"You can't prove anything," Russel gasps out from under the tight grip of Nate's hand against his larynx.

"Tell me something," Nate says, ignoring Russel's pained breaths. "If all your men are knocked out, who is watching your girls?"

"I..." Jack says, looking around wildly when he notices Parker and Hardison are both suddenly missing.

"When we convince them to go to the police," Nate says, "and we will. You'll never see daylight outside of the prison yard again."

"If you live that long," Eliot drawls, grinning, "They don't particularly appreciate pedophiles in prison."

As if to accentuate his point, Parker and Hardison come back out into the main room at that moment, a small group of malnourished looking girls with them. The oldest of the bunch looks no more than seventeen, while the youngest can't be older than eight.

"Now this can go one of two ways," Nate starts, "the easy way…." And then Jack is pushing Nate away with a burst of force and fleeing for the door.

"Hard way it is," Eliot sighs, before launching himself at the running criminal.

"They always choose the hard way," Hardison says, shaking his head.

"They never learn," Parker agrees.

Sophie just laughs and wraps herself around Nate, adrenalin wearing off as she's flooded with relief.

.

By the time the cops show up, all the henchmen are bound and gagged, and Nate is there waiting with a "concerned citizen to the rescue" story for them.

"Aw, Nate gets to be Liam Neeson this time," Parker says, as they watch from the SUV, which is hidden in the shadows.

"Usually it's Eliot," Hardison agrees.

"Please," Eliot scoffs. "That guy can't do an accent to save his life."

The other three dissolve into helpless laughter, ignoring the death glare that Eliot sends their way.

.

.

Many hours of paperwork and exhausted sleep later, the five of them sit around the big oblong table in Nate and Sophie's kitchen, catching up as Eliot deposits plates of homemade lasagna in front of them, next to the organic spinach salad. When everyone is served, he finally sits down with the rest of them and re-joins the conversation.

"So," he says, raising an eyebrow at Nate, "maybe you two aren't as retired as you led us to believe?"

"Don't think I didn't see the job-board in the guest room," Hardison adds casually.

"We're mostly retired!" Sophie defends, "it's just, sometimes…"

"The tingles!" Parker exclaims, grinning over at them wildly.

After a moment of confused silence, Parker explains.

"You miss the tingles you get when you pull off a con! You know, when your skin feels like it's buzzing and the air is too thin but it tastes so good!"

Sophie laughs in delight at her outburst before smiling fondly.

"I really do miss you, Parker," she says, staring at all of them for a moment, "I miss all of you."

"So come back," Parker says, shrugging.

"Or at least visit us more," Hardison adds, nudging Eliot's shoulder with his own.

Eliot gives him a pained look but then rolls his eyes before sighing and turning his attention back to Nate and Sophie.

"It would be nice to see you more often," he says, only sounding a tiny bit forced. Hardison is proud.

"Don't know if we can be full time anymore," Nate says, smirking, "but we do seem to have a little more free time than we know what to do with sometimes."

"Traveling the world has been a lot of fun," Sophie says, covering Nate's hand with hers where it rests on the table. "But we like it here, too. It's mostly quiet, and our lives aren't usually threatened. I'm not sure I could be convinced to come back, even if I wanted to."

"So what you're saying," Hardison catches on, giving them a smirk of his own, "that what we would need to do is provide the right…"

"Don't!" Eliot says, smacking his hand across Hardison's mouth. "It's too cheesy, come on."

"Leverage!" Parker calls out, sticking her tongue out at Eliot's outraged expression.

The table erupts into laughter that even Eliot joins after a long minute of resisting.

.

The rest of the morning is spent catching up and resolving to visit each other more often. When the three of them finally get back to their building the following night, Parker and Hardison wave a quick goodbye to Eliot before heading to their bed for some much needed rest.

.

"You know," Parker says a little later on as they lie in the dark, "I've always wanted to try the Iron Angel con." She's got one of Hardison's hands between both of hers and is absently playing with his fingers. He's come to find it very soothing.

"The Iron Angel?" Hardison asks, "but I thought you hated squirrels?"

"We can substitute chipmunks, it'll be fine," Parker says breezily.

"Still," Hardison says, "it's a pretty elaborate job. We'd definitely need at least one other… oh, I see what you're doing here."

It's too dark to see, but he's sure that Parker's smile is radiant.

"Five people should work," she says, "don't you think?"

Hardison just laughs and pulls his hand away from hers so that he can scoop her up into a hug against his chest.

"Yeah," he says, nuzzling into her soft, sweet smelling hair.

"I think five will be just right."

.

.

The End


End file.
